An ex-Army friend writes this morning with deep unease about the recent event in which Israeli jets attacked a purported Syrian nuke site. He wonders if it's connected to this week's assassination of a Christian parliamentarian in Lebanon. We're trying to figure out what just happened in Syria. It doesn't make sense to me that Syria is trying to start its own nuke program. Surely they can't be under any illusions that Israel would allow that. Maybe they were doing precisely that ... or maybe, as my friend suggests, the Syrians were planning to get nuclear material to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What really happened here? Any guesses?
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"I would think a test of air defenses/terror camp strike would have had the Syrians screaming to all and sundry."
I would, too, had they downed a jet, but publicizing the opposite would be a revelation of defensive nakedness.
Beats me. The speculation is all over the map. See, e.g.:
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-on-osirak-ii.html
I wonder if nukes or WMDs were involved whatsoever.
The history of the past few years has been all about intelligence failures. Rampant speculation got us in trouble during Afghanistan and later in Iraq. Considering the number of anonymous sources and speculative think-tankers everyone's using as sources, I think its better to just sit and watch than to get excited about a non-existent Syrian nuclear program.
DU
Brad:
That's a good point.
This business with Syria is getting a bit unnerving. Both Israel and Syria are being very quiet about what really happened. I have also seen a report at
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2666
(I haven't seen it validated anywhere else) which suggests that there was some sort of accident at a Syrian chemical weapons factory which killed 15 Syrian officers and "several dozen" Iranian engineers.
Has anyone seen the Jane's Defense Weekly report, or any other source, confirming this?
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